


yogurt to be kidding me

by ghostvinyls (jebbyfish)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, One Shot, late night escapades lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-04-24 23:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14366529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jebbyfish/pseuds/ghostvinyls
Summary: Pidge and Lance don't know each other. At least, not in the way two friends should. Why do they only ever hang out in the dead of night? And can Lance motivate her to go outside without being snarky?--one shot cause it's 2 in the morning so i'm basically them right now





	1. not-so blind date

Her vision was blurry.

Pidge let out a weary yawn, rubbing at her eyes with the butt of her palm, letting air out from between her lips. The blue light from her computer screen illuminated the joints of her fingers, the wrinkles in the fabric of her t-shirt.

“Go to bed.”

It was Lance, naturally. He placed a mug of something-quite-like-coffee--oh, _it is coffee_ \-- next to her laptop.

“Your words contradict your actions, McClain.”

He collapsed next to her in an unceremonial heap, a yawn stifling his next line of thought.

“I was pretending to be the responsible friend.”

She pressed her lips together, a soft hum escaping her. Quickly, she typed out more of what she was working on, unbothered by the warm closeness of Lance’s body, the way he began to lean into her side, chin bobbing close to the curve of her shoulder.

“I thought you finished studying,” said Lance.

“I did. This is for a personal thing.”

“A personal thing?”

“I’ve decided to keep up a journal.”

Lance let out a hard laugh. “Oh my god. You? Keeping a journal?”

She made a face, turning to look at him full-on, brows furrowing. “What makes that so funny?”

“You’re never going to keep up with it. You drop projects _all the time_ when you get bored. It’s just not part of your personality, Pidge.”

She let out a huff, turning back to the screen, to the word document opened in front of her. Quickly, her fingers flew across the keyboard, and she spoke aloud as she typed.

_“Journal Seven. Lance brought me coffee, which I thought was very cool of him, but then he opened that stupid mouth of his and now I have to contemplate on pouring his gift right into his lap.”_

Lance leaned away, eyes half-lidded. “You’re a hardass.”

“You are too. What’s on your mind, McClain?”

He turned his gaze away.

It had become routine, the late-night conversations between the two living down the hall from each other in their dormitory. Pidge’s roommate slept to the (loud) sounds of the rainforest. Lance’s roommate snored loud. And it had been an accident, the first time Lance found Pidge in the common room at three a.m., headset in with music turned up high that he could hear the guitar riffs from halfway across the room.

One accident and four months later, it was part of their weekly routine. They didn’t speak much, save for the quiet moments they had at night’s darkest hour, alone amongst themselves in the common room. If people saw them together, they wouldn’t assume they knew each other, much lest that they were friends.

“I had a blind date today.” He said it plainly. Pidge’s brow quirked up.

“And it was bad?”

“Ugh,” he slid down the couch they shared, propping his feet up on the table. “She was a total snob. Didn’t like the restaurant I took her to because everything was under twenty bucks.”

She let out a snort. “How dare you.”

“Wouldn’t even let me buy her frozen yogurt afterwards! And to think I budgeted.”

“Hey, you still have fro-yo money. That’s a plus, right?”

Lance’s pout broke into a grin. “That _is_ a plus.”

A steady silence fell over the pair, and Pidge went back to typing, the clacking of keys the only thing disturbing the silence. Lance stared at her work, brows furrowing.

“Are you just writing about me?”

“Nothing interesting happens to me,” Pidge said with a shrug.

“This is entry seven, right?” Lance sat up straighter, leaning back into the smaller girl, chin resting against her shoulder without a care for personal space or property. “Can you read me another one?”

“No.”

He clutched at his heart, dramatically falling away from her, outstretching a hand in her direction. “Your brutal words, have fatally wounded me, Pidge! Only a maiden’s secret journal entries can save me now!”

She didn’t look away from her journal. Only typed more.

“Thank you, McClain, for this quality content.”

“You’re so mean. And to think, I, your only night owl friend, was about to ask you if you wanted to get fro-yo.”

Her typing stopped. She turned to him, brows knitting together.

“What’s the catch?”

“Ah, another arrow to the heart.”

“McClain.”

“You’ll have to actually be awake at a reasonable time. Because no fro-yo place in the _world_ is open at this hour.”

“That’s false. It’s currently 5pm in Australia. I’m sure fro-yo places in Australia are open.”

“Have I told you that you’re a hardass?”

“Twice, now.”

Lance let out a groan. “Pidge, let me level with you, because you’re clearly not getting it. I want. To treat you. To frozen yogurt. And hang out. While the sun is up.”

He followed a rhythm, a syllabic beat, his hands pressed together and motioning towards her with each punctuation.

She beamed. “But I thought the charm of being my friend was only seeing me in the cover of night?”

“Holy Toledo, _Batman_. You could not get any more aggravating.”

Pidge shrugged, turning back to her laptop--and to Lance’s delight--shutting it close. “Any particular reason?”

“Am I supposed to have a reason to want to hang out with my friends?”

Pidge thought for a moment.

“I guess it doesn’t seem like our style?”

“Oh, because this--” he gestured between them both, then around the darkness of the common room. “--Is our style?”

“Kind of, yeah. It’s nice.” She was smiling again, adjusting herself to sit criss-cross on the couch, hands in her lap. “I don’t hang out with anyone else like this.”

“If you did, I’d be offended. This is our _thing.”_

“Exactly. It’s our thing.”

He opened his mouth to retaliate, but closed it quickly. She was smiling, natural and calm, as if she was expecting Lance to eventually ask her to hang out at another time. She was prepared to reject him, or so it seemed. She hadn’t said yes or no, yet, to fro-yo.

And it was aggravating.

Maybe it was wrong of him, to have this weird desire to see Pidge during the day and not in her pajamas, to see her looking less like a gremlin in the dark and more like a real person. He couldn’t quite place why he cared so much. Maybe because it was mysterious, to know what Pidge looked like with proper sunlight? Maybe because she was always here in the common room, that he wanted desperately to know what she did during the day. Did Pidge have hobbies? Or did she just do her homework in the dead of night? Does she have a job? Does Pidge Holt even exist outside the dorms?

_Was she a ghost?_

The last one was a stretch.

She took a sip of the coffee Lance brought her, letting out a content sigh. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome. You know, I work at the campus cafe. You could come in during one of my shifts and I’ll make you another on the house.”

(And see you outside of the dorms.)

She grinned. “Gave up on fro-yo?”

“I am not giving up on fro-yo.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” Pidge set the mug down, turning towards him, the corners of her lips upturned in that quiet smile of hers. “I’m going to bed. I’ll bother you after I get back from class, and you can take me on this spectacular fro-yo date you have planned.”

“Thank you,” Lance said, a satisfied groan escaping him. Then his eyes widened.

“Did you say date?”

That caught her off-guard. Without the glow of the laptop screen, it was hard to see her features. Hard to know if she was turning as red as he was.

“Goodnight, Lance.”

“Goodnight-- _oh my god!_ You called me Lance!”

“No, I didn’t, McClain. Goodnight.”

She was quicker than him, scooping up her study materials in both hands, as well as the coffee cup, scurrying quickly across the room and down the hall. Lance made a show, knees sinking into the cushion of the couch as he called after her in loud whispers.

“Pidge. Pidgey. Pidge-o. Pigeon. _Pidgeotto._ Come back here! We can talk about this! I’m totally flattered if you want to call it a date!”

She didn’t come back, much to his relief. He probably wouldn’t be able to handle it if her brain booted back up, if she threw a brilliant retort at him when he was _completely_ fried. It’d be emotional warfare. She already had struck him with enough arrows tonight.

He stood up after a long moment of sitting in complete silence, letting out a quiet huff before going down the same hallway back to his own dorm. He should get some sleep.

After all, he had a fro-yo date later.


	2. a multitude of toppings

Class ended two hours ago.

At least, if Lance was keeping his time right. And he was pretty sure he was.

Pidge was burning daylight, forcing him to wait for her.

He thought it would be a little creepy, to try and hang out in front of her dorm room and surprise her when she finally stepped out in her daytime glory. Did Pidge have a daytime glory? Was he imagining some sort of fantasy girl that didn’t really exist? How was Pidge’s daily routine? Clearly it was pretty messed up if she spent a couple of nights every week doing homework before the asscrack of dawn, right?

The anxiety was starting to get to him. He drummed his leg a little bit faster.

She wouldn’t have cancelled on him, right? Maybe he was wrong about when her classes ended. But she told him her schedule! He was pretty great at remembering things, but Pidge usually wasn’t, so maybe she did forget? Should he text her? Would it be annoying to text her?

Why was he so damn _ nervous? _

Focus on something else.

His eyes drifted around the common room. It wasn’t particularly big, no, but it was comfortable. A small kitchen, a couple of couches and chairs and a television to sit and watch. A couple of guys had turned on Indiana Jones but were barely paying attention. Another girl was making herself a sandwich. He could hear a conversation down the hall, as more people approached the commons.

His heart began to hammer a little harder in his chest.

It wasn’t a date. Maybe. Pidge just called it a date by accident. Lance certainly didn’t want to think it was a date. After all, it was just Pidge and frozen yogurt. Just him and his weird night owl friend and a couple of bowls of delicious fro-yo.

Then he saw her.

It was a little disorienting, to say the least. He didn’t recognize her for a moment. Usually, he couldn’t make out Pidge’s features, because the commons at night were dark and she refused to turn on the light because “McClain, that wastes energy and we are not about to become earth murderers,” or something. He stood up quickly, smoothing out the wrinkles in his jacket, running a quick hand through his hair as Pidge got closer.

For someone he thought of as a friend, it was like meeting her for the first time.

_ She has freckles. _

That was the first coherent thought Lance had.

“Hello McClain,” Pidge chirped, raising a hand in greeting. Green sweater, dark blue overalls. Beat up sneakers. Not what he expected. Or everything he expected?

A smattering of freckles.

_ Remember to speak, idiot. _

“Uh. Hello! Yo. Hi, Pidge.”

Smooth like butter.

Pidge switched the weight of her footing, head cocking as she stared up at him. Her hair was tawny. Her eyes were honey.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Lance blinked.

“The hell do you mean?”

She splayed her arms, doing a dramatically slow spin. “I’m here. During the day.  _ The forbidden hours.” _

He barked out a laugh. “I didn’t expect you to look so…”

He paused, biting his tongue. What was he going to say? Normal? Stylish? Pretty?

“What?”

_ “Well rested.” _

There we go, settle with the joke. Pidge liked jokes.

“I didn’t expect you to look like a jackass.”

“Ah, that’s the Pidge I know and  _ adore _ . Shall we?”

He offered his arm. She ignored him and pressed onwards.

“We shall.”

And it wasn’t a quiet journey. Lance would’ve preferred him and Pidge not having anything to talk about, in hindsight. He would’ve preferred a quiet, seemingly awkward walk to the bus stop without anything to talk to her about.

But Pidge was a secret powerhouse.

It threw him off, again. Lance hadn’t seen this side of Pidge before, ever. She was always… awkwardly chatty, to put it mildly. But here, beneath a bright blue sky and a shining sun, Pidge had an almost impenetrable air of absolute  _ cool  _ radiating off of her. She had a way of somehow knowing almost every person the pair passed by. A greeting there, a short breeze of a question that she seemed to know all the answers to, whether it was about a class meeting, a due date, a general “how’s your day going?”

“You’re… pretty popular,” Lance said casually, as she waved goodbye to a leaving pair of girls who had stopped her to ask about their next robotics meeting. Robotics. He didn’t know she was in the robotics club.

“I do a lot of extracurriculars,” Pidge said, unphased by the inquiry. “It keeps me busy between classes.”

“Jesus, and you still can’t find the time to get a good night of sleep?”

She laughed at him, throwing her head back as she did. “You know, I thought the same thing! One of these days I’ll finally have enough on my plate to knock my ass out at the sound, reasonable hour of…  _ midnight _ .”

Lance instinctively elbowed her shoulder.

“Maybe push for two in the morning, first.”

“Har-har.”

He wasn’t sure when it happened during their stroll, but he was hyper-aware of it now. The weight of Pidge’s hand in his. It must’ve come naturally to him, or to her, or to both of them, because it wasn’t until they were at the bus stop did he realize she was swinging his arm with hers. Gently, almost unnoticeable, if Lance didn’t realize it was happening.

He gave her hand a squeeze, to test her, to see if Pidge also realized that at some indistinguishable walk from point A to B, their hands had intertwined.

She squeezed back.

And then the bus rolled up.

It was crowded, much to Lance’s expectation, and he wondered, quietly, if Pidge was alright with that. He looked back towards her as she filed in line behind him, and fortunately caught her eye. A smile.

“What?”

“Is… uh…” Lance looked around. “The crowding okay for you?”

“I’m not claustrophobic if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Oh. Cool, cool.”

There was a long pause, as Lance vice gripped the handgrip above him and the bus began to move. Pidge took hold of his other hand, not too tightly, the rest of her body leaning into the pole next to her.

“You’re claustrophobic?” came her voice. Lance let out a strained laugh.

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not,” Pidge said, and she returned to swinging his hand in hers. “I would never.”

The words were reassuring in a way Lance didn’t expect them to be. She gave him a sincere smile, and despite the lack of movement available, got as far away from him as she could. But she never did let go of his hand. Not until their stop came up in the city, and she had to let him go to ring the bell to be let off the bus.

It was a nice day for frozen yogurt, Lance decided.

It was a brisk walk to find the fated frozen yogurt place, because if Lance was honest, it wasn’t hard to find. A soft pink exterior, blue and white striped umbrellas, a neon sign that flashed the word “OPEN” like a lighthouse beckoning ships home. Pidge beat him to the door, swinging it open and bowing to him as he came up, as if she was a professional in opening doors for people.

“My good sir,” Pidge said, her voice dripping in a mocking posh accent. Lance let out a hard laugh, poking her in the shoulder as he stepped through the threshold.

“You’re so dumb.”

“Hey! That makes two of us. Twice the dumbasses.”

They fed into the line, which was about three other people in front of them, eyes reading over the different slowly-spinning machines filled with about twenty different frozen yogurt flavors.

“Are you a fruit or chocolate person?” Pidge asked, hands aimlessly twisting and turning her empty fro-yo container.

“I usually go for fruit flavors. Why?”

“Interesting. I like chocolate.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“With like, peanut butter cups.”

“Again, not shocking.”

“And sour patch kids.”

Lance blinked, giving Pidge a double-take. For a brief, bliss moment, he had fallen for it.

That is, until he saw the shit-eating grin she was giving him.

“I dare you to do that.”

“What? No! That totally messes up my carefully curated flavor profile, McClain!”

Lance shrugged, trying to keep his smile on lockdown, not when this was the perfect opportunity to act nonchalant. “Maybe you shouldn’t have suggested it.”

“God, if you’re daring me to do that, then…” She spends a long time thinking. Almost too long.  _ “All _ the toppings.”

“That renders it inedible!”

“If you do it, I’ll do it. Then we’ll both have inedible frozen yogurt.”

“That  _ completely  _ misses the point of getting frozen yogurt.”

She grinned. “Then I guess we’d have to make it up by going out again, right?”

And despite himself, Lance’s heart stammered to a stop.

Going out.

Again?

_ Again? _

_ With him? _

Pidge crouched, maneuvering around Lance, talking as she makes her way to her preferred brownie fudge flavor. “So, are we doing this or not?”

“Uh,” Lance began, standing up straighter, aware of the heat that went from the tips of his ears to his toes. “Doing what?”

“All the toppings. Duh.”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.”

He trailed behind her, almost aimless, and Lance’s mind went a mile a minute. He couldn’t have a crush on her, right? She was just his weird gremlin night-owl friend. She was his weirdly comforting rock in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep and it was nice to walk into the commons and just find her existing in that space. She was some turd who listened to him vent and gave weird advice and always had something to say that made him laugh. She was just Pidge, after all.

Maybe that’s what he liked about her, that she was just Pidge.

She had a look of triumph on her face when they reached the end of the toppings line, while the employee gave them both a confused, tired look. They paid a lot more than just his savings from the failed blind date. Not that either seemed to mind.

“This is disgusting,” Lance said, once they decided to settle in one of the outdoor sitting areas. Pidge let out a laugh, lifting up a spoonful of toppings with hardly any yogurt.

“Just close your eyes and pretend you’re not eating a horrifying amalgamation of sugary, fruity, savory, chocolatey--”

“I got the gist of it. Please stop.”

She let out another laugh, digging her spoon into the horror, mixing as carefully as she could. “So what’s the plan after we eat as much of this monster yogurt as we can?”

Lance blinked, weighing a spoonful of Oreo cookie bits and gummy bears. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she leaned in, spearing her yogurt with the spoon. “Do you want to keep hanging out, Lance?”

“Well, obviously. We’re  _ friends,” _ he stressed the last word, hoping to convince himself. “It’d be dumb if I wanted to stop hanging out with you.”

She studied him for a moment, head bobbing up and down in slow motions. “Okay. Yeah, you’re right. It’d be dumb if we stopped hanging out with each other.”

She dug back into her yogurt, eating a bit faster, and Lance cocked his head to the side.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

A stop. A crunch of a bad combination of toppings.

“I like hanging out with you,” Pidge said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “But this was weird, right? Hanging out like… like normal people.”

Her voice dropped as she said it, a teasing grin on her lips. Lance snorted.

“It’s only weird if you make it weird, you know.”

“I know! But it’s like,” she waved her spoon at him. “We’re totally different people out here. No one understands our dynamic. It’s so exposing.”

Lance let out a laugh, almost shy. “Who cares, dude? I like  _ you _ . Not what people think of you.”

She froze in her stance, spoon dripping chocolate frozen yogurt onto the table, and Lance moved quick to clean it up with a napkin. Slowly, Pidge dropped her spoon back into her bowl, gaze unwavering from Lance. He looked back, beaming.

“What’s up now, Pidge?”

“Sorry. That was just a really nice thing to say. I like you too, Lance.”

There was warmth in her tone, warmth that was almost too easy for Lance to read as anything other than platonic. It made his heart stammer. It made his knees weak. But he wasn’t going to let that show.

Quickly, he jabbed his own spoon towards her nose, letting out a shit-eating laugh.

“You called me Lance again!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think people were asking for a part two >:3c  
> but of course i need a conclusion after their fro-yo date!!! so now it's a three parter. with part three coming soon. it's nice to relax with a dumb fluffy fic, and it was nice to revisit this one ;w; especially since i keep writing at like, three in the morning HAHA (and i'm so unmotivated to write my other fics qqqqqq)
> 
> what's everyone's preferred flavor profiles for fro-yo.... i like fruity myself!! with like, popping boba and stuff.... now i'm just hungry too :""")


	3. sunrises

She was getting tired of derivatives. Pidge rubbed at her eyes, setting down her laptop before stomping back into the floor’s kitchen, turning on the faucet and unceremoniously leaning across the sink to drink straight from the flow of water. No one was gonna judge her at three in the morning.

“God, you’re an animal.”

Alright, one person was going to judge her.

She shut the faucet off and fell back on her feet from tiptoes, wiping dribbles of water from her mouth with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Lance was leaning against the wall, arms folded over his chest, a tired smile on his face.

“It’s a waste of a cup to… get a cup.”

“Really? That’s your excuse?”

She snorted, hands slipping into the pockets of her shorts as they stood facing each other, grateful for the familiarity in their nighttime rhythm. Lance quietly turned around, making his way over to the couch to his usual spot, glancing over at the screen of her laptop as Pidge found it in good sense to join him.

“Calculus?”

“Unfortunately.”

He let out a low whistle, and Pidge sat back on her side, cross-legged, picking the laptop back up to focus back on her homework. He was less distracting these days.Well, as less distracting Lance could be.

“Hey, I was thinking,” Lance said suddenly, leaning away from Pidge’s laptop to look her in the face. “After fro-yo tomorrow…”

“Oh?” Pidge said, and she couldn’t help but grin. “You  _ finally  _ thought of something?”

Lance let out a laugh. “Wait, wait. Let me finish.”

They had gone out for frozen yogurt three times in the last few weeks. It was difficult, Pidge realized, to match her day schedule to Lance’s; he had work, or classes, and swim meet was coming up for him in the spring; she had robotics, her volunteer work, other clubs between classes. There was a reason, really, for their times to align only at night; she wondered sometimes if that was for the better. Worried, really, that it was for the better. As if the universe was subtly telling her she and Lance weren’t destined for sunrises.

“--You’re absolutely not listening.”

Pidge blinked, refocusing on Lance’s face, who was frowning at her. She frowned right back.

“Sorry. I got distracted. Repeat?”

“I was thinking, if you’re totally completely free the rest of the evening tomorrow,” Lance grinned. “After fro-yo, we hit the arcade for a few hours. There’s this new ramen place that opened up nearby, so we could catch dinner, and I know you want to see the new Marvel movie and that’s on at 8:15, and we should be back in time so you could sleep and make it to your meeting in the morning--”

Her brows raised, and she stopped him with a hand. “You… planned all of that?”

“Well, duh,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. “I know we don’t have all the time in the world to go out, so I figured we should start making whole days of it.”

“Just to hang out with me?”

He blinked. There was sincerity in the way he was looking at her, a glint of amusement in his eyes that made her wonder if it was just a trick of the light.

“You know, for a complete genius, you can be  _ extremely  _ dense.”

“I take pride in being a part-time dumbass, McClain.”

Lance let out a laugh, almost a breath of fresh air from her studies, and she clicked her laptop shut, turning to face him completely, ignoring the stammer of her chest.

“I-I mean, I’m just assuming you were serious about hanging out more--”

Pidge felt her face flush, and she raised her hands in defense. “Oh my god. Yeah! I… Yeah, absolutely. I was. I do want to hang out with you. I, uh…”

She trailed off.

Was it okay to say that she wanted to  _ be _ with him?

Of course, the rational part of her brain was saying it was. In fact, every part of her brain was telling her it was. They made sense, logically, emotionally. Lance was easy to talk to. She had fun when she was with Lance. And the part that made the most sense to her was that, in the dead hours of night, when she and Lance could’ve possibly been doing absolutely anything else that wasn’t sitting in the common rooms for hours, he still, without question or fail, chose her.

And she chose him right back.

And that was enough to reassure her it was okay.

“What’s up?” Lance finally bit, leaning closer into Pidge’s side so she could smell the coconut-scented shampoo he so obviously was using, feel the warmth radiating from his body, the smooth vibrations in his voice. Pidge sat up straighter.

“You… asked me about my keeping a journal awhile back.”

Lance snorted. “Are you actually keeping up with your journal?”

“Obviously, otherwise you’ll just never hear about it ever again,” she grinned, waking her laptop back up and going through her files for her digital journal. “I figured I could share an entry with you.

“Awww. Have you been writing about me?” He placed his hands over his heart, cocking his head with a teasing smile.

“You wanna find out, huh?”

“Well,  _ duh.” _

Her heartbeat was rapid, as she turned fully to her opened document, positioning herself to face Lance so he wasn’t tempted to read over her shoulder.

“Entry number twenty,” Pidge began. Lance leaned forward, a twinkle in his eyes that she would’ve missed if her laptop screen wasn’t so bright. “Lance planned another froyo date. It sucks that we can’t hang out as often as we want because we’re both so busy, but I’m looking forward to it.”

She paused, and Lance took the cue. “Very cute, and very true.”

“I’m not done.”

She steeled herself, hands hovering over the keyboard, speaking as she typed. “He’s infuriating, and a total hardass, and I can’t believe he planned, like, a six hour date. And I can’t believe I’m calling it a date. But that’s probably something Lance doesn’t mind either.”

She waited for Lance to snark a retort, but to her surprise, he was quiet. Listening. A pleasant smile on his face. She frowned at him, going back to typing.

“And that’s also extremely infuriating. And it’s really nice of him to keep coming out here at night. Before we met, it was… lonely. And usually that’s something I’m alright with. But now,” her eyes flitted back up to his face, and she didn’t expect him to be looking right at her, making eye contact. He grinned.

She grinned back.

“I can’t imagine sitting out here without him. Because I think, journal… I think I’m a little bit in love with getting free fro-yo.”

That made him laugh, and Pidge shut her laptop, a breath escaping her as she whispered a conclusion.

“Or a little bit in love with Lance, himself.”

He was grinning. Giddier than she’d ever seen him.

“Who knew you could be such a poet?”

“You’re a dork,” Pidge said, snorting. “Was… was that okay?”

It may have been a trick of the light, but she swore she could see him blushing. Quietly, Lance leaned in, and she was hyper aware of it; Lance forgetting personal space never bothered her, not really, but now his nose was grazing hers and she wondered if this was what it was like to be floating in space without a tether.

“More than okay.”

And then his lips grazed hers, for barely a second, and before he could pull back she pressed into him, fully, mouth parting in a small ‘o,’ relishing in how warm and soft his lips were and surprised to find that he was being gentle with her (which was fine by her, as far as first kisses go.)

She was the first to break it, pulling back, self consciously pulling her laptop close to her chest, as if there was anything about herself she could still think to hide. Lance snorted, a hand quick to cover his mouth, but she could still see the corners of his eyes crinkle, the pull of his cheeks. He whispered after a moment, a blush rising on his face.

“I was hoping to save that.”

Pidge furrowed her brow. “Save that for what?”

“Oh, I had this whole thing planned!” Lance began, and he was back to himself, spreading his arms and leaning conspiratorially. “We were going to go to the arcade, and after I totally kick your ass at DDR, I was going to sweep you off your feet all romantic and say something totally cool, like, ‘you’re still a winner to me,’ and then I’d kiss you and--”

She put up a hand, grinning. “Wait, rewind. You think you’re gonna beat me at DDR?”

“Oh my god. That was, like, not the point.”

“Yeah it was. You were going to revolve your _ entire pick-up line _ on the slim chance that you’d beat me.”

“I’ve been practicing.”

“You’re not beating me at DDR, McClain.”

That sent them both into laughter, hands weakly coming together in embrace and the banter continued, well into the night. It was still the same routine, Pidge realized, but this time Lance wasn’t afraid to sit closer and talk aimlessly, and Pidge sat finishing her calculus homework.

He nudged her, as she was reaching the final question, and she looked at him, frowning.

“What?”

“I think this is the first time we’ve made it all the way to sunrise.”

Pidge followed his gaze, squinting at the sky outside the dorm window, surprised to see the inky black she had grown accustomed to fade into a powder blue. She turned back to him, smiling, and Lance grinned back, leaning close.

“I can see your freckles better in this light.”

That made her laugh.

“I can see you better, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> weeeeeeeee hope you enjoyed this fic!!!! there wasn't much to wrap up on, so this was defs the shortest chapter hehe ;w; had to like....... seal it w a kiss, of course,
> 
> that's all 2 say!!!!!! u are free to yell at me on tumblr dot com @nadiarizavi <3

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!!! just wanted to churn out a quick one shot between finishing a certain other fic ;) i missed writing these two haha
> 
> ALSO!!!!!!!!!!  
> [rainforest zine!!!!!!!](http://plance-zine.tumblr.com/post/172694343807/sales-for-rainforest-a-pidge-x-lance-zine-are-now)  
> i'm in here with a hot new fic!!!!!!!! do support the zine!!!!!! all the work in it is amazing and i'm blown away by the talent in it and it's beautifully put together and ahhhhhhhhh. AHHHHHHHHH. ok great hehe that's all i had 2 say
> 
> thank you for reading i love you!!!!!!! maybe if there's interest i'll write a sequel about the fro-yo date. who knows. i really am craving fro-yo.


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